Long 4th weekend

Check to pics...

The sholder feels a bit tender. Not sore muscles tender but broken skin thender. Strange since the cuts don't look very deep, more scratches than any thing. I wish I could have got more pics of the ride but snapping rolling photos on single track is a long harder/impossile compared to cruising the open road and snapping away. This if overlooking the danger involved for the camera and I have already broken one camera this year.
Lots of the guys picked up thorns at Clintion today. I think I picked up one as well in the last 2 miles. I stopped to fix it and discovered I had also ripped a pinky finger sized hole in the side wall. Bummer since it wouldn't have been terribly easy to fix trail side (although with hindsight being 20/20 I can think of several things I should have tried besides walking out) and I ended up walking a mile and 1/2 back to the car...The trails are pretty techincal for riding, walking while carrying/rolling your bike was more diffcult than I was really ready to enjoy. No worries I made it back and had an extra set of tires in the Green Torpedo. Bouns since I have been meaning to take that rear Bontreger tire off cause I wasn't diging it, now its off and the more prefered Maxxis is pushing the rear. El Jefe being a swell guy grabbed on of my tires out of the van and had heading back into the trials so I didn't have to walk. Some where we switched trails cause we missed. He rolled up as I was swapping tires in the parking lot. Thanks for the effort dude. I wasn't the only walker. DP snapped a pedal spindel which also ripped open the side of his SiDi shoe, better than his foot. Doug picked up his third flat of the day rolling into the lot as well. Wtth the exception of me every one excaped the ride injury free. I have the claw marks down my back from the real low tree and right before that on a tricky down hill turn where most of us went down or off, gave myself a nice bruise at the bottom of my ribs. Nothing like almost going over the bar and catching the end of the bar right below your bottom rib. Good thing I have my natural padding, or as some people would call it, a beer gut.
Off to lunch at Quintin's on Mass St in Larwence. Pretty college girls...yeah! Beer, 1/2 a sandwitch and a bread bowl of soup...tasty. Next we hit the River trails. I love the river trail...smooth twist tastey single track. I hadn't been pushing hard at the first trail. I was so rocky and hilly I never really built up any real speed and flow...that all changed at the River. I was feeling good and let it hang out. I usually hammer the front half of the trail and ease back quite a bit for the back. I couldn't help it, I just hammered some more. At the end of the loop I was fired up for another but no one else seemed real up to it. Something about pushing the pace so hard, so I caved and went back to the car. Besides I am sure El Jefe didn't really want to sit and wait until I came back. In the long run it was probably best that I didn't do another lap. Might have been painful. It is pretty sandy at the river and lots of the corners were pretty scary at the big speeds (12mph average) and round two would have had to be slower. Needless to say I was ready to eat again about 20 minutes after we hit the road back to KC.
Made my self some good gurb when I got home, found myself some beer too.....mmmmm beer.
Hope your weekend was a good as mine....Hey we still get one more day, sweet.